There is a definite relationship between art and its everlasting power to change the world around us. It is a subtle power that evokes emotions and ignites questions. It has the ability to inspire and the potential to change. Art provides a glimpse into windows of truths that we as humans are sometimes too afraid to look at and too coward to address. It greets age old themes such as love, grief, passion and death. Whether seen in a painting or heard in a song, the many different forms of art prove time after time that it a force to be reckoned with and a force that will never die. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, readers get a glimpse into the wondrous powers and deep meanings of art as seen through the stories of Arachne and Orpheus. Both stories explore a vast array of themes using art as its telescope to explore the microcosm of human suffering and loss. As its title suggests, it transforms the reader's perception, giving art a much more profound meaning.
"Arachne's distinction lay not in her birth or the place she hailed from but solely in her art" (Ovid 6.7-8). Arachne was a young Lydian girl who was said to rival the goddess Minerva in the art of weaving tapestries. Art defined Arachne and ultimately was the decider in her fate. Minerva loathed the fact that a mere human could be compared to her so she then challenged Arachne to a competition in weaving. They both designed beautiful tapestries, each revealing a different insight of the world. Minerva fashioned a tapestry that glorified the gods. She wove the "twelve Olympians, Jove in their midst, with august dignity sat upon lofty thrones" (6.72-73). Minerva's tapestry revealed her attitude to the competition itself: that no human being can rival the gods and that the gods alone are to be held in all glory. Minerva's tapestry "suggested the earth had been struck by the goddess's spear so that Minerva's rival could have some clear indication of what reward to expect for such crazily reckless defiance" (6.
